Overnight Health Care: Novartis pulls back on drug price hikes

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Hill

Overnight Health Care: Novartis pulls back on drug price hikes | House Dems launch Medicare for All caucus | Trump officials pushing ahead on Medicaid work requirements
BY PETER SULLIVAN - 07/18/18 08:07 PM EDT

While you were focused on the fallout from President Trump's walkback of his walkback, Novartis decided to freeze drug price increases, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services won't give up on Kentucky Medicaid work requirements, and House Democrats launched a Medicare for All caucus. Worry not. We'll get you caught up. We'll start with some drug pricing news:

Novartis pulls back on planned drug price increases

Taking a cue from Pfizer, Novartis on Wednesday became the second company to announce it won't raise drug prices this year. During a call with investors, CEO Vas Narasimhan said the decision was made because of the uncertainty surrounding the administration's drug pricing blueprint.


"We looked in June at the overall situation, the blueprint coming out, and we made the decision prior to some of the recent events that we were going to withdraw any further price increases, and make a commitment internally that we were not going to make any further price increases for the remainder of 2018," Narasimhan said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/overnights/397747-overnight-health-care-novartis-pulls-back-on-drug-price-hikes

[BigmanPigman]

1. Isn't that the big drug co. that was using Cohen's services?

[TexasTowelie]

3. They are.

They make Lantus insulin and the price has more than tripled within the past 10 years.

[Honeycombe8]

2. I think the drug price thing will unfortunately reflect well on Trump or the Repubs.

It sounds to me like they're scared of what he, backed by his Congress, will do, if they hike drug prices too much. He ranted about drug prices previously. So rolling the prices back will halt action by the govt, they think. I think it's unlikely they rolled them back out of a sudden conscience or other non-business factors.

I hope the Dems in Congress are taking notice. It IS possible to scare BigPharma. They have to know you're serious, ticked off as hell, and you have a Congress to take action on it, and you WILL take action.

Trump will get credit for this, unfortunately, whether it's warranted or not. OTOH, many people won't notice, because of his outrageous behavior in other ways that's grabbing the headlines.

One thing that is necessary to do is to remove the provision in Medicare that prevents the fed. from negotiating prices with Big Pharma. It's unbelievable that provision exists. Medicare has the largest block of health care beneficiaries in the country. It could wield a lot of power regarding drug prices, if it were allowed to. (That provision was put in with Medicare Part D by the Bush admin & Congress. It was not removed during the Obama administration, which was a disappointment. Big Pharma has a strong lobbying group and has a lot of power.)

[guss]

4. Pharma and oil

Repugs are sponsored by both.
And Pharma and oil will move the market to make em look good.
later they will get deregulated, tax breaks, and basically screw
the good USA.
they will Cash in later, Cash in on Americans retirement programs.
while they overcharge and over bill them.
Take a hit now and get gold later.
soulless asses

[BumRushDaShow]

5. "we were not going to make any further price increases" - BECAUSE

-Recall the purported discussions that happened Tuesday between some in congress and Drumpf regarding tax giveaway "2.0", which supposedly could include reducing the corporate income tax even further from 21% to 20%.

[Snellius]

6. No "further price increases for the remainder of 2018". Then, guess what?

Pfizer also deferred drug price hikes only temporarily.

This is nothing but a temporary PR maneuver for only six months.